


Finding Absolution

by Lia



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Cetaganda, Dag Benin being awesome, Gen, facepaint, ghem clans, haut-ghem collisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia/pseuds/Lia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dag Benin, the day before his graduation into the ranks of the Cetagandan Imperial Service, reflects upon the events that led him on this path for the retrieval of the honor of his line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Absolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val Mora (valmora)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/gifts).



> Fulfilling the prompt: Dag Benin being his awesome detectively self. Unfortunately, had to subtract the detectively. Fortunately, added in backstory for *why* he is awesome detectively with lots of OCs.
> 
> Big huge HUGE thanks to Philomytha for last-minute beta'ing of awesomeness and great, appreciated advice, particularly with names. I also give thanks tea, without which I would be even more stressed.
> 
> I would have written more because I have tidbits in my head, but they refused to come out.
> 
> Happy Yueltide reading!

The young man looked in the mirror, carefully examining his freshly cleaned face. It was the same face it had been yesterday; folly to think that somehow, it should be different. Well, soon it would be.

Everything else was.

And today, he had the beginning of a chance. A chance to redeem his line's honor.

Dag Benin looked at the facepaint before him. Not the true colors; black, white, and red; but a strange mix of orange, mahogany, and pearl - the standard tricolored practice combination, used for no other purpose. He must not fail, in the slightest test. He must not fail, in the slightest way. If he did, he would be less than nothing, as he was nothing now.

His hands ghosted over the pattern again, in practice. Tomorrow, it would be for real. Tomorrow, he would be in the service of the Empire, a representative of Cetaganda.

Grimacing, he picked up the paints, and as instructed, meditated on the path that led him here. On the call of service for the Empire.

To be a ghem lord of Cetaganda was to serve the Clan, as the Clan served the Empire. His childhood had been in the great rambling clanstead in the mountains of Eta Ceta. Much of the Benin clan lived on the surrounding land, and the rest all gathered in as they could for festivals and holidays, as was ghem tradition. There were always those who could not make it due to service and duties, but the Benin clan house was always full of light, cousins galore to play with, aunts and uncles of varying degrees to teach and talk to and mete out what discipline warranted.

But there was always an underlying tension, mostly emanating from his father and his grandmother, Cerie.

It began shortly before he was born. His father was the first son of his grandfather, who was head of the clan, and he was his father's first son, first born child.

And then, as his father had said repeatedly, came disaster. Grandfather Konarel "flew too high" and stood before the Emperor to claim his reward. His father had always cursed when he talked of it, which was only in private.

The reward was a union with the haut Zel, who was to become Konarel's first Lady in all things.  She was to be kept with the luxury that befit her status, and be given all the tools to do her work. All of this meant expense on the clan, to keep her in the style she was accustomed, and for the honor of a haut woman's expertise and of half-haut children in the next generation, bringing beauty and status.

Her children also became Konarel's heirs, and her son would become the clan head. Replacing Cerie as head of the clan women, and disinheriting Dag's father in one fell swoop.

Cerie resented the usurpation of her position in the clan, and every season made motions to keep her power on the household and take charge in the way she used to have the right to. It only seemed to infuriate her more that Zel permitted her with a gracious nod.

Mother always said that while Cerie deserved his respect as grandmother, he shouldn't listen to her poison.  Father didn't say anything about the whole thing - but then, Father was rarely around. And being raised at the Clanstead, they weren't the final authorities on anything, anyway. Those were always Grandfather Konarel and the Lady Zel.

Sometime after Mother's death, when Dag was about eight, he was ducking a lesson, and hid in the New East Wing, where he wasn't supposed to be. It was the wing of the Ladies' Crafts, where the clan women plied their craft in creation, making beauty in living things for the honor of the Clan.  For dealing so much with plants and animals, Dag always privately thought it had a lot of weird machines. Lady Zel found him there, tucked into a small closet in Mother's area with a book on history, which was filled to the brim with interesting people and events and was so much more interesting than the mathematics he had been assigned to for the day, and was much more comforting than sitting in his lonely bedroom.

She had looked at him, smiled, and put her finger to her lips. And had left him there. No scolding, no 'naughty boy', but a small bit of approval to work outside the rules.

After that, there was nothing Cerie or his father could say that would change his innermost, private approval of the Lady. Especially not when his younger uncle, the new heir Antan, was such a good playmate!

Dag smiled at a few treasured memories. The Lady helping him with his basic genetics homework, making sense of the confusing methods that his teachers couldn't seem to explain well enough; her asking him for a hand with a project while he stole another few minutes of privacy stolen in the New East Wing where no one else ever found him; the way she smiled. Playing with Antan in the yard, helping with his homework as the Lady set him to (which oddly helped with his own studies, even though Antan was a year behind him), fighting with him like brothers, as Mother had always called it.

He looked in the mirror at the orange and mahagony zig zag across his face and frowned. It was time for the pearl, which tomorrow would be red. Accents in teardrops and blood.

Dag shuddered as the scene flashed across his mind. He'd spent the past eight years - never mind.

He took a deep breath, and let the memories wash over him impassively as he painted what right now he could only see as bloody tears.

The blood was all over the room. The torn, familiar face that would no longer move, would no longer smile. His fear as he shouted "No!" and threw himself over his young aunt, Bryna, a few months old, and was sliced across the chest instead of her. The pain. The disgrace of not stopping his father sooner.

They said that the shame was not his and he had done a brave and honorable thing, but said that his father's - and thus his - line was dishonored. So he was caught in the middle, now as all the years since his father's execution for murder and his grandmother's imprisonment for encouraging the deeds. For murdering Antan. For almost murdering Bryna. For injuring the Lady Zel so severely that they had temporarily given her a float chair again.

There was no honor in being descended from such people.

Tomorrow he would no longer be simply a representative of his clan, but a representative of Cetaganda. Tomorrow, he would no longer be simply a ghem-lord of a minor line, but one of the many faces of the Imperium.

And he would catch the bastards who would kill children, _before_ they succeeded.

This he promised, finishing the last pearl teardrop, shimmering against his face. He stared at the design for an instant, assuring himself of its impeccability, and washed it clean again.

The next day, he saw his grandfather in the graduation crowd along with his Lady. The smile she gave was as close to benediction as Dag had ever felt.


End file.
